describe free sections of Dietrich Buxtehude's preludes: "Now swift, now hesitating, now in one voice, now in many voices, now for a while behind the beat, without measure of sound, but not without the intent to please, to overtake and to astonish." In Austria, the style was practised by the famous formidable virtuoso Heinrich Ignaz Biber and the older Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. In the Southern Netherlands, Nicolaus à Kempis pioneered the style in his Symphoniae published between 1644 and 1649 in Antwerp. Composers employing the stylus fantasticus Johann Sebastian Bach Antonio Bertali Heinrich Ignaz Biber Dietrich Buxtehude Nicolaus à Kempis Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli Johann Adam Reincken Johann Heinrich Schmelzer Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky Johann Schop Nicolaus Bruhns Girolamo Frescobaldi Bibliography Kircher, Athanasius, 1602–1680. Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et dissoni in libros digesta. Romae : Ex typographia Haeredum Francisci. Corbelletti, 1650. Kircher, Athanasius at the Galileo Project Collins, Paul. “The Stylus Phantasticus and Free Keyboard Music of the North German Baroque.” Google Books. Routledge, July 5, 2017. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Stylus_Phantasticus_and_Free_Keyboar.html?id=HCwxDwAAQBAJ. Mattheson, Johann, and Margarete Reimann. Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, 1739. Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1954. Terence, Charlston. “Now Swift, Now Hesitating: The Stylus Phantasticus and the Art of Fantasy.” Musica antiqua, 2012, 30–35. Heller, Wendy. Music in the Baroque. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. Snyder, Kerala J. "Buxtehude, Dieterich." Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 13 Sep. 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000004477. References Historical sources Musurgia universalis by Athanasius Kircher; page 585 (Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) Musurgia universalis by Athanasius Kircher; page 585 (University of Strasbourg - alt) Early Chamber Music by Ruth Halle Rowen; page 10 Baroque music